


Recipe for Success

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: Alpha Timeline Fluff [6]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Backstory, Baking, Childhood, Curtain Fic, Cute, Family, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Prompt Fic, Sweet, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jane Crocker is seven, she decides to bake a cake for her father's birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recipe for Success

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written in response to the following [kinkmeme prompt](http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/39716.html?thread=44185124#cmt44185124): _I just want a nice feel good Jane fic about her first attempts at baking. Like how her dad taught her that sort of thing and them being happy and familial._ It has been slightly edited and expanded from the version posted at the kinkmeme.

When Jane Crocker is seven, she decides to bake a cake for her father's birthday. She doesn't tell him this, of course. It's going to be a present and presents are a surprise, so obviously she has to bake it in secret. Which means she can't ask him to teach her.

But she's watched him bake. You put flour and sugar and eggs and oil and a little milk or water and maybe some other stuff in a bowl, stir it really hard, pour it into a pan, and stick it in the oven for a while until the little wind-up clock goes _ding_. It can't be too hard, right?

It would be even easier if she used Betty Crocker cake mix -- which is scrumptious and perfect and her own grandmother's recipe! -- but people at school and on television shows always talk about handmade things being a sign of love, so she thinks maybe she'll try making the cake from scratch so it'll be extra-specially surprising. Dad bakes from scratch when he has extra time and isn't tired from work, so he'll probably like that.

Dad works until five at his office and now that Jane is in first grade, she's allowed to take the bus home and be on her own for nearly three hours. So she has time to bake, and even time to clean the kitchen afterward if she's careful. She probably ought to practice at least once before making the actual birthday cake, just in case baking turns out to be like making birthday cards. (Dad didn't say anything about the explosion of glitter and glue in her room last year, but Jane was _so embarrassed_ at the way he kept telling her he was proud of her persistence that it was almost worse than if he'd scolded.)

Thus resolved, Jane fidgets through school the next day, races into her house rather than stay outside to enjoy the beautiful spring day, throws her bright red Kitchen Princess backpack onto the sofa, and cackles maniacally as she flings open the doors to the kitchen. "Cake, cake, cake, cake, beautiful cake!" she shouts. She spins once on her toes, wobbles, and catches her balance just before she would've fallen against the corner of the counter. Whoops!

Now, where does Dad keep the mixing bowls?

Half an hour later, Jane looks at the gloopy batter in her bowl and frowns. Flour, sugar, eggs, oil, milk. She guessed at how much of each to put in, but it looks almost right. It doesn't taste right, though, when she drags her finger around the edge of the bowl and licks. She's forgetting something. Um. Hmm. Oh, fiddlesticks.

Goshdarnit, she is a Crocker! She should just know these things, in her blood.

Jane closes her eyes, pretends she's sitting on the counter next to the sink and watching Dad move around the kitchen. He lets her put in every ingredient before he stirs them into the batter. Big plastic cups of flour and sugar. Little glass cups of oil and milk. Raw eggs cracked open into a bowl so he can fish out the crumbly shell bits she always misses. And the the little metal measuring spoons, a different color for each size, and the tiny brown bottle of... "Vanilla!" Jane says in triumph, and drags the stepstool over to the spice rack so she can reach.

She frowns over the measuring spoons, then picks the medium one instead of the smallest because the vanilla smells so good -- more is better, right?

She's still missing something. She closes her eyes and fans the measuring spoons between her fingers, trying to remember. One spoon for the vanilla, another for... "Salt!" Which is funny, because cake isn't salty at all. If the salt disappears, it can't really be important, right? But Dad always puts salt into whatever he bakes and he doesn't like wasting things, so it must do _something_. Maybe it's for the eggs, like salt and pepper on omelets.

Jane sighs. Then she finds the big canister of salt and tries to pour just a little into the smallest measuring spoon. She spills all over the sides, but that's okay; she'll clean up once the cake is in the oven.

Okay. Flour, sugar, eggs, oil, milk, vanilla, salt. That's probably everything. Jane pulls out a cake pan and rubs butter all over (which is the most fun part and Dad always lets her do it) before pouring in the cake batter. Then she bites her lip and tries to remember how high to set the oven. Crockercorp sells new fancy ovens with automatic settings for baking and roasting and all kinds of things -- Jane likes to look through the company catalogues with their bright red gizmos and smiling people -- but Dad won't buy one no matter how much Jane begs. So she has to guess. She sets the oven on 300 degrees -- she can hear the gas burst into flame with a muted _whoosh_ \-- and slides the cake pan in.

Then she sets the wind-up clock for an hour and starts to clean up all the stuff she's spilled and all the bowls and spoons and cups she's used. She thinks she still has time to do her math worksheet and start on her spelling list before Dad gets home. He'll never suspect!

Oh, wait.

She hurries back into the kitchen, opens the window, and turns on the fan over the stove. There. That's safer.

Jane checks on the cake a couple times before the timer goes _ding_. It smells kind of all right, but it's staying all flat and heavy in the pan instead of rising yellow and fluffy like it should. And when she pulls the pan out -- carefully, with big padded mitts on her hands -- and sticks a knife in, the stainless steel comes back with sticky clumpy bits all along the blade. Drat and phooey.

Jane checks the clock on the wall. Dad will be home in half an hour. Maybe she should turn the heat up? So she sets the oven to 400 degrees and the wind-up clock for twenty minutes and jerks her head up every time a car drives past on the street.

This time she doesn't bother checking if it's done. She just whisks the cake upstairs to her room, pan and knife and all, and hides it under her bed. (Not on the carpet, of course. She put a wire cooling rack down. It's totally safe!) Then she hangs up the padded mitts and turns on the television. She's already seen this episode of _X-Men: Evolution_ \-- poor Rogue, getting hypnotized into attacking her friends and releasing Apocalypse! -- but even reruns are interesting. Besides, she needs to act normal.

Jane stays on the couch when Dad unlocks the front door. He scrapes his shoes on the doormat, then vanishes into his study for a minute, reappearing with his suit jacket off and his pipe lit. "How was your afternoon?" he asks, resting one hand on the back of the couch.

"Okay," Jane says.

"And your homework?"

"Just a math sheet. And I started this week's spelling list," Jane tells him. She points to the dictionary on the coffee table for proof. "But I didn't write the sentences."

"You made a good start. We can work on the sentences together if you want," Dad says.

Jane thinks about the cake hidden under her bed. "Um. I'll ask if I get stuck?"

"An excellent plan," Dad agrees. On screen, the credits roll. Dad picks up the remote and turns the television off. "And speaking of plans and homework, it's time for your piano lesson. Go set up your music while I get a glass of water." He turns toward the kitchen.

Jane twitches. She cleaned very carefully! But Dad is _Dad_. She's pretty sure he knows everything. What if she put something back in the wrong spot? What if he can smell the sugar even though she used the fan?

But Dad doesn't talk about anything but tempo and correct hand positions when he joins her in the study, so Jane does her best to stop worrying and concentrate on her music. Bach sounds really boring when she plays, but she knows if she can get faster and less choppy it will turn amazing, like when Dad demonstrates a phrase or two for her to imitate. One day she wants to be exactly like him, cool hats and all... only CEO of Crockercorp instead of an independent CPA, of course. Running a business sounds much more interesting than fixing other people's math problems all day.

After half an hour, Dad tells her he's proud of how she's improving. "Practice makes perfect," he says, like always. Then he heads to the kitchen to make dinner. Jane stays at the piano and does her scale and chord exercises because Dad is always right. If he says practice is good, she'll practice lots. But she only plays them twice tonight instead of three times before she hurries upstairs to work on her spelling sentences.

Except she doesn't really start writing. Instead she shuts her door and pulls the cake out from under her bed.

It's still flat and heavy, more like cookies or brownies than a proper cake. Jane takes the knife and cuts a little bit from one corner. It's kind of gooey inside still, and when she tastes it, the flavor is _weird_ \-- the vanilla is so strong it makes her sneeze, and the sugar is somehow too much and not enough at the same time. Jane sticks out her tongue and scowls.

She can't give a cake like this to Dad. She can't even eat it herself! How on earth is she supposed to get rid of it? Dad will notice if she puts it in the wastebasket. He'd smell something if she tried to hide it in her backpack. He always checks her sylladex before she leaves the house so she can't sneak it out that way. Drat and botheration.

Wait. Maybe she can feed it to the annoying white cat that blinks in and out and stares at her without any eyes? Yes, that should work. Even if the cat doesn't like the cake, she can probably talk it into making the mess vanish. She'll just have to hope it won't make the pan vanish too.

But how is she supposed to fix what she did wrong? She doesn't even know what the problem was! (Besides using too much vanilla. That's pretty easy to figure out.)

Oh, fudge.

Jane shoves the cake into her sock drawer. (It's safer than her sylladex -- no risk of decaptchaloging it by accident -- and who cares if her feet end up smelling like vanilla?) Then she flops onto her bed in utter dejection. She can't fix her baking unless she asks Dad for help, but if she asks him he'll know she wants to bake something and his birthday cake won't be a surprise anymore. It's not fair.

She doesn't get up when Dad calls her down to dinner. He tries again, and then she hears his footsteps creak up the stairs. He sits down on the very end of the bed, by her feet. She can smell the smoky, earthy residue of his pipe hanging around him, just the faintest trace of whiskey and cherry mingling with the Cavendish.

"I'm not hungry," Jane pronounces into her pillow.

"Hmm," Dad says.

"I'm not! And I don't care what you cooked."

"Hmm," Dad says again.

Jane kicks her feet against her quilt. "Cooking from scratch is stupid anyway. So is baking. It's all stupid. Crockercorp makes mixes for everything, and if you don't use a mix, how do you know what to put into a cake and how much of everything to use? See? Stupid!"

"It can be frustrating," Dad agrees. "But people have been cooking and baking for thousands of years, and when a cook makes something delicious, she or he often writes down the process so other people can repeat it. That's called a recipe. Would you like me to show you how to read one? I don't use them much because I have a lot of practice and a good sense for what will and won't work, but they're the easiest way to learn cooking and baking -- I might not know how to make everything you might want to try, and I may not always be around to teach you in person."

Jane looks up. "Oh. Really?"

"Really and truly," Dad says, and uses the stem of his pipe to sketch an X over his heart. "Now, are you sure you don't want dinner? I made spaghetti with extra meatballs, just the way you like it."

"I _guess_ I could eat," Jane concedes.

"My heroine. Thank you for saving me from having to face the terrible spaghetti monster all alone," Dad says. He ruffles her hair -- Jane grabs a parfait spoon from her strife specibus and flails uselessly in an attempt to preserve her dignity -- and clamps his pipe back between his teeth. "Shall we?" He gestures toward the hallway in silent offer.

Jane tucks away her spoon and follows him downstairs.

After dinner, Dad opens one of the heavy books from the kitchen cabinet and explains how to read a recipe for apple pie. There is so much to keep straight! But the recipe explains all the steps and all the ingredients in the right amounts. If she follows it very carefully, she'll end up with the pie in the picture on the opposite page.

"Do you want to make this for dessert tonight?" Dad asks when they reach the end of the page.

Jane shakes her head. "No. Let's make brownies instead, from grandma's mix."

So they do. The kitchen smells of chocolate all evening, and the cat with no eyes takes the horrible cake (and its sneezy vanilla smell) away in the morning, so there's no way Dad will ever know how Jane screwed up.

Next week, on Dad's birthday, Jane triumphantly brings a real, proper, fluffy cake with a red frosting pipe for decoration down from her room after dinner. Dad pronounces it the most delicious thing he's ever tasted. He is so, so proud of her.

(Jane's frosting skills still need work -- about the only upside is that the mess is both edible and not quite as bad as the glitter explosion from last year -- but that's a problem for another day.)

**Author's Note:**

> First, a confession: Jane's cake!fail is largely based on my own terrible childhood adventures in baking, before I knew that recipes were a thing. I really did hide my screwups in my sock drawer, but lacking a magical teleporting cat, I had to feed mine to my dog… and occasionally to my little sister. *is totally unrepentant* (Also, I was ten years old, not seven. I am not sure how I made it to ten without realizing what my mom’s cookbooks and recipe box were for, but I can be amazingly oblivious at times.)
> 
> Second, I have decided, for no particular reason, that Dad Crocker's birthday is in late May. Any potential discrepancies in the airdate of the mentioned _X-Men Evolution_ rerun episode versus that time period and Jane's seventh birthday -- which was April 13 2003 -- can be put down to alternate universe differences. Thus saith the author.
> 
> Third, and just for the record, the key ingredient Jane forgot is baking powder.
> 
> This has been a public service announcement. *grin*


End file.
